


Let's Go Far Away

by SpaceJackalope



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Crossdressing, F/F, Minor Violence, Queer Themes, Romance, aka using clothes and strict gender roles to get the job you want, and any loot that strikes your fancy, in the vein of Sweet Polly Oliver, rated M for minor violence + brief sex, themes of seizing the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 04:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20633039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceJackalope/pseuds/SpaceJackalope
Summary: In the golden age of piracy, the crew of Discovery mutinies and seizes their own destiny. For Owosekun and Detmer, this includes being incredibly gay for each other. A little bit Jacky Faber, a little bit Black Sails, a little bit Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, a little bit Pirates of the Caribbean, a lot bit "I just want them to kiss!!" Elements of both seasons of Disco in a blender.





	Let's Go Far Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thaumatologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thaumatologist/gifts).

> Written for the 2019 Star Trek Femslash Bang! 
> 
> The extraordinarily beautiful official art for this fic is by elissastillstands.tumblr.com! Be sure to check out her other work for Star Trek and Hadestown, among others, it's all wonderful. {https://elissastillstands.tumblr.com/post/187732749430/were-pirate-queens-arent-we-now-we-can-do}
> 
> Many thanks and happy birthday to Thaumatologist for her friendship, letting me watch this show with her, beta-reading and cheerleading! 
> 
> I'm also very grateful to Lena for her encouragement at a crucial moment of "oh god, I picked a rarepair, someone tell me if they're in character"!

Joann Owosekun fell in love at the court-martial of Michael Burnham, Master and Commander of the _HMS Discovery_. Not with Michael, who remained her heart’s brother—sister, now—but with Quartermaster Detmer.

The presiding commodore had quite a lot to say about Michael, philosophizing and chastising her by turns. The Jamaican courtroom hung thick with humidity, and Joann scowled when she checked her pocketwatch. This marked the fourth hour, the sun must already be low in the sky—this was a spectacle. A wonder they hadn’t dragged Burnham back to London, really, since they’d apparently had a mind to disgrace her. “A gobsmackingly successful gambit, really—posing as a man! To have come so far in the ranks of His Majesty’s Navy confirms the convictions of those among us who advocate for the education of women. Your strength, wit, and dedication are commendable. However. It is beyond the laws of our crown and our God for you to continue serving on a vessel full of men, let alone a military one. You are therefore issued a dishonorable discharge. You will be escorted back to your cell, where you will be provided with women’s clothing, and sent to make your own way. It was suggested to me, and I very much agree, that your intelligence and organizational prowess would make you well-suited to a position as a shop manageress, or housekeeper for the holdings of a gentleperson of means. Vice Admiral Cornwell has generously offered to provide you with references; I recommend you accept. Now, it is my duty to…”

“You can’t do this to him! To her! I mean! Commander Burnham is the only reason _Discovery_ is still afloat, the only reason we survived, you _can’t_, you just _can’t_ mean to punish her—”

“Midshipman, ahhhh…”

“Sebastian Tilly, sir!”

“Midshipman Tilly, there are _rules_ for reasons which will no doubt become apparent to you when you have attained a greater age. You are—what, 15 or 16?—and it shall soon occur to you why it is right to separate the sexes…”

“Sir, that’s poppycock, sir!”

Owosekun cringed. Poor little Tilly, he was only digging himself into trouble as well. She would have stopped him if she could, but he was seated across the aisle. She shook her head sympathetically in his direction. The lad hero-worshipped Burnham, who had a sangfroid and elegance alien to Tilly’s boisterous tenacity. He looked older than he was in that moment, righteousness setting his jaw. The judge looked in the direction of a bailiff, but someone was already clapping a hand on Tilly’s shoulder. “Sit down, lad, until you learn to time your battles better.” Kieron laughed kindly as he said it, and the last rays of light filtered through the glass window and set his red hair afire. Tilly sat down, but pulled a sulky face. He hissed something at Detmer—it looked like “I _outrank_ you”, which was true—and the quartermaster simply laughed again.

Joann felt her stomach flip. _Oh, come now,_ she told herself sternly, _just because your whole world’s crashing around your ears, there’s no call to get gooey over your friend just because you stared at him too hard from across a room at an emotional moment—oh dammit._

She looked away, inhaled deeply, glanced back—Tilly was holding Detmer’s hand like it was the only thing keeping him from drowning.

⁂

The crew of the _Discovery_ gathered in the square, waited for Burnham to emerge from the prison. Drinks and torches passed hands, whispers mixed with shouts. Joann’s skin buzzed with anxious electricity. Burnham had been exposed; how long could _Jonathan_ Owosekun last without “his” friend’s help? Surely her crewmates would look at each other, at her, with new scrutiny now that this idea had been planted in their heads—_a woman among us, our Master and Commander no less!_ She needed a plan, needed to protect herself. She tried to imagine being parted from the sea, sleeping on land, not seeing Burnham and Detmer and Rhys’s faces. Doctor Culber came up beside her, touched her elbow with a light hand. “Johnny, I fear a riot,” he whispered against her ear.

She shrugged, trying to hide the intensity of her fear. “We all love and respect Miss Burnham. It is difficult to watch…this.”

He frowned. “’Miss’ Burnham, is it?”

She gave him an even stare. “Isn’t it?”

“She’s still my Commander, I believe.”

Joann felt like hugging him, or like crying. “As do I. Hugh—” _can you keep a secret_, but Mr. Saru had just elevated his already tall frame with an upturned fruit crate, clear voice cutting through the crowd:

“This is wrong. I say to you again: _this is wrong_! All of us know this, and all of us are—forgive my language—_mad as hell_. Who came for us when many among our crew were captured by La Rell, dame sans merci?”

“Burnham!” The crew cried, with one voice.

“Who found _The Red Angel_ and her crew when they were becalmed? Who released Ripper the whale, and had us follow him to safe waters? Who has kept us alive and sound for these past months and years?”

“Burnham!”

“Who is our Commander?”

“_Michael Burnham!”_

“Where the winds will blow me for this choice, I cannot say, but it is clear to me that I must leave His Majesty’s service, and follow Burnham to the next adventure. Will you join me, men?” And with a flourish, Saru stripped off his officer’s jacket and flung it to the cobblestones. Approving applause erupted across the square. Owosekun saw Mr. Rhys following suit out of the corner of her eye, but her focus was fixed on Kieron Detmer, crossing slowly to Saru’s side. Saru ceded the box to him with a gracious nod. “Men! Lend your ears to Mr. Detmer! The best of quartermasters and the finest of men!” A round of cheers.

Kieron surveyed the crew with his one good eye. Too fucking handsome by half for a man with an eyepatch, Owosekun had always thought. “Listen. I’m not as eloquent as Mr. Saru, so I’ll keep this short. Commander Burnham made the _Discovery_ the finest ship on the waves. It’s my home, and I know you all feel the same. There is nobody like Burnham, because she knows there’s nobody like _us_, either.” Very deliberately, Detmer threw his jacket to join Saru’s, and then kept going, removing his shirt and tying it around his waist. Joann felt like shouting, like singing. Detmer was made like her, had a chest like hers. She and Michael had an _ally_, not just the obvious supporters, but someone who knew firsthand what their lives were _like_. And it was Detmer, whom she…well. She’d sort _that_ out at more opportune time. “My name is Keyla Detmer! I am Quartermaster to the _Discovery_! I am hers and she is mine! Commander Burnham will step out of that prison any moment now, and when she does, I’m going to take my ass down to the dock and see if I can’t keep hold of this freedom she helped me create! _Who’s with me?_” 

The crew roared.

Owosekun copied Detmer, stripping to the waist—_see, your purser is a woman too_. She thought that must be it, but then she looked over at Midshipman Tilly, red-faced and stunned, and only had time to think the poor lad must never have seen tits before…and then Tilly opened her own shirt.

Boatswain Reno, Master-at-arms Nhan, the Captain’s clerk Mr. Airiam, the surgeon’s aide Pollard, a surprising number of able seamen—able sea_women_. They grinned at each other, laughed and stood a little taller. The prison door opened, and Michael Burnham stepped out in the seafoam linen dress someone had brought her, to find herself with an honor guard of tits-out naval defectors.

Even in the dim light, Owosekun could see the bob of Michael’s throat as she swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. Her chin lifted. “Friends,” she continued, “and enemies.” There came a smattering of cheers and amused whistles. “I won’t insult your intelligence by asking if you’re all quite sure you know what you’re doing. Anyone can walk away now, and I’ll think no less of you.” Not a soul moved. “Then we had better be quick, before the reinforcements someone just ran for come.” The young guardsman—boy, really—who had escorted Michael into the square put a shaky hand on his weapon, but she laughed kindly and gave his shoulder a gentle push. “Tell them we overpowered you.” He fled. There are others, Owosekun has seen them in the corners of her vision, but they seemed to weigh up their desire to fight an entire ship’s worth of fighters, and no attack came. Burnham strode forward, the crew gathering in her wake. Owosekun glanced over her shoulder, unsettled by the lack of alarm bells. She couldn’t be sure, she’d never go so far as to swear to it, but two figures on the ramparts of the fort raised their hands in salute, and it seemed to her as though they were Admiral Georgiou and Vice Admiral Cornwell.

They walked—no, they _promenaded—_to the docks, a small coterie of guards trailing after them, as if sure their runners will have successfully gotten help, that said reinforcements will catch up to them at any moment, and then the fight will begin. 

There’s something about power that makes people foolish, Joann thought. It happened to the late, unlamented, Captain Lorca, whose hubris got him killed. The Royal Navy—the entire British Empire—suffered from this cock-of-the-walk nonsense, so self-assured that it never occurred to the soldiers on guard that the crew of _Discovery_ might do this, just take it back. They tried to stop them, of course, but the advantage lay fully with Burnham and her allies. The soldiers posted by the ship, and those behind them, attempted to sandwich the _Discovery_ crew, and did kill a few by gunshot.

Someone had given Burnham a sword, and she drew first blood with it. A red-jacketed arm tried to hit Owosekun with a riflebutt, and she dove out of the way, pulled roughly on his ankle so that he fell and hit the dock, and stayed down, face contorting in pain. Detmer had a knife in each hand, keeping close to her, which might’ve been insulting if it wasn’t so reassuring. Drs. Stamets and Culber had less combat experience than the rest, but there they were, back-to-back and fending off what attacks broke through their friends’ protection. Owosekun smacked her hilt against the temple of a soldier aiming for Tilly’s back, and he too collapsed to the ground. There came a great noise, as ropes were urgently severed, and then they were away. 

⁂

In the morning, Joann made her way to the bowspirit and climbed into the pocket of rigging there, back to the _Discovery_’s hull. It’s a little like swimming and a little like flying, sitting there, dipping down to meet crashing waves and up into the warm air. She let her mouth fill with the taste of salt. She didn’t care when someone climbed down to join her, content to have company, until she looked up and met Keyla Detmer’s eye.

“Good morning, Detmer.”

“Hullo, Owo.” Keyla shifted, settled more comfortably in the netting. “I don’t know your name, y’know, and I’m finding it kinda funny. After all this time—but I suppose you’re still trying to get your head to stop calling me Kieran, so it ain’t all on me.”

Owosekun laughed. “True enough. My name is Joann.”

“Joann,” Keyla repeated, rolling it across her tongue like a sweet. “I like that, it suits you.”

“Does it?”

“It sounds steady. Sounds calm.”

It was bad enough, Joann thought, when her stomach flipped and she thought Detmer was a man. It had become a thousand times worse now, with Keyla looking light and easy, shirt half unbuttoned and her chest shifting with her breath. Because now—there were no secrets and only very base anxieties. It was like being naked. She wasn’t sure she liked it.

“Did Burnham know?”

“That I’m a woman?” Keyla shrugged. “When I signed on, she caught me aside one day and told me I was faking stubble wrong. So aye, she might be the reason I lasted this long. Did she know about you?”

“Helped me look more convincing in the drawers region,” Owo drawled, knowing her eyes were sparkling. Keyla laughed so hard that when a wave smacked across their faces, she caught it open-mouthed and choked on it before sliding into laughter again. She was beautiful. “Burnham wants us to all sit down and talk later,” Joann told her, pushing her feelings away. “because things will be different, now.”

“Now that we’re free?”

“Now that the gentlemen know who we really are.”

“Same thing, to _my_ mind. We’re pirate queens, aren’t we? Now we can do whatever we want.”

What Owo wanted was to kiss her. “Perhaps you’re right, my friend,” she said, and gave her a brotherly slap on the shoulder.

⁂

They crowded into the captain’s cabin. Owo took a chair next to Reno, while Keyla planted herself on the bed between Tilly and Nilsson. Reno gave Joann a tap on the shoulder and a teasing smirk—she’d been staring. She shrugged noncommittally, and Reno pressed a flask of brandy into her hand. Someone passed a tin of ginger biscuits in their direction.

“I’m glad we could all assemble,” Michael said, sitting on top of the captain’s desk. She’d put kohl around her eyes, and her posture had changed, some undefinable tension now absent. “I do not expect we’ll see much change in the crew dynamic, now that we’re being ourselves. Still, it’s better for us to talk about it, I think.”

One of the younger girls—17 or so, though she’d been posing as a lad of 12—talked a bit about whether some of the other girls might like to move their hammocks so they could have a corner of sleeping space to themselves. Tilly, whose name turned out to be Sylvia, chimed in to say she thought it was a lovely idea, and then she went on a little tangent about friendship. Tilly was actually 24, and now that she had switched up her outfit, she looked it. Odd how the cut of a shirt does that much for a person, Joann thought, but awfully useful.

And that, she realized, was her brain doing the same old thing; trying to think of ways to hide, to pass. What a strange feeling, to not need to. “Can we—” she began, shook her head and grinned. “My name is Joann. It’s been a long time since people called me that, but it’s my true name, and I’m very fond of it. So. If you’ve been calling me Johnny, I’d like it if you switched over.”

Reno raised her flask in her direction. “I’m keeping Jett, I think. My name used to be Mathilde, but I’m not attached to it anymore.”

“I’m Tracy,” “Maureen,” “Yang,” “Fatimah.”

“I’m going to keep Max,” Midshipman Rause said. “But not like Bo’sun Reno. I just. I don’t _want_ to stop being a man, thanks all the same.” A few other heads nodded. Another midshipman, Molina, had come to the meeting with a similar desire, but she was going to be known as a woman for the first time. Nobody challenged them, but Joann had already felt some of the crew’s attitudes were unimaginatively _literal_ about this whole…body business. She privately resolved to make sure anybody who _did_ give them shit would have to answer for it. She’d spent too long compromising on her own gender not to feel for them with her whole heart.

“What about you, Commander?” Sylvia Tilly piped up. “Do you have a name you want us to know?”

Michael stared into space for a moment, surprised. “I think…no. The child I was died when my parents did, and I went to sea to keep myself alive and free. I like being called Michael. It was my father’s name, and…it makes me happy.” She finished with a faint, genuine smile, which grew into a broad, shining grin. “Which is the whole point, for all of us, isn’t it?”

“Amen, cap’n!” Keyla raised her mug high.

⁂

“Why did you go to sea, Detmer?” Keyla was at the helm, charged to keep the _Discovery _moving anywhere that was away from British territory, and Owosekun had brought her an orange and her own company.

“My Da was a sailor, and my brothers, and my grandfathers, and most of my uncles. Seemed like the best place to create my own luck. And then I got myself on a ship, and the ocean got itself into my soul.”

“I know what you mean.”

“What about you, _Joann_?” Keyla countered, and Joann wondered why she emphasized her name, or if it was only her imagination.

“I’m good at things my folks said only boys could do anything with. Mathematics and mechanisms and bossing people around. So.” She shrugged. “I saw a chance and ran with it. Why did you feel like you needed to make your own luck, then?”

“I didn’t want to marry some man,” she laughed, voice scornful.

“A particular ‘some man,’ or any?”

“Any man. Wouldn’t say ‘no’ to marrying a woman, as much as might be possible, but she’d have to be a very particular sort.” There was a long, easy silence, during which Joann could only look up at the stars, winking mischief back at her, or down at her hands, pulling apart the segments of her own orange. Her skin felt pleasantly warm, but she couldn’t get her tongue to work. _What sort, Keyla?_

She thought about the first time they’d met. Owosekun had just transferred from another ship, right before Dr. Stamets’ investigations into the natural world had become the crux of _Discovery_’s orders. Detmer had come up to Joann’s compact writing desk, hands in her pockets, whistling. Cheeky and handsome and looking like good trouble. “Mr. Owosekun, I’ve got a complaint to make.”

“Indeed? And what is your name?”

“Kieron Detmer, quartermaster. I’m distressed to report it, but I’ve been short-changed on standard-issue equipment, and I wondered if you could see your way to giving me my due.”

“I’m sorry to hear of it. What equipment?”

“Well, y’see Mr. Owosekun, I think someone stole my right eye!”

In the present day, Joann laughed aloud.

“What’s gotten into you, Owo? Share the joke?”

“I’m just thinking.”

“Oh, come on, Johnny—‘scuse me, c’mon, Jo—I’ll give you my shiniest penny for your thoughts.” 

Joann hummed happily. “You’re the first person who called me Owo, do you remember?”

“I don’t. Seems to me like you’ve always been our Owo.” _Your Owo in particular?_

“It was when we were in the Galapagos, and I was aiding Dr. Stamets in assessing what samples we could safely transport, and what needed to be illustrated only. And you’d been telling the shipboys tall tales about how Dr. Stamets was going to find dragons there, but you were being so deadpan you got some of the grown folk convinced too, so you tried it on me, just to see how far you could go. And it shouldn’t have worked, but I hadn’t yet played cards with you, so eventually I believed—not that you were right, but that you _thought_ you were. So you’d wandered over to the tent Stamets and I were working in, and you looked at the giant iguana he’d stuffed, and you looked at me, and you said—just as tragically wounded as a romantic hero—‘Owo, what’s _this_?’ and I realized I’d no idea how something like that _doesn’t_ count as a dragon, not knowing animals like Dr. Stamets. And then, of course, he thought you were genuinely interested—”

“I _was_! Eventually. When he’d explained enough.”

“And he _also_ thought Owo was a capital nickname, so Dr. Culber picked it up from him, and then I was well and truly stuck.”

Keyla didn’t look away from the horizon, but she smirked a little. “Forgive me?”

“I’m sure I can find it in my heart, if I really work at it.”

“You always do. Get what you set out to, I mean.”

“_Almost_ always.”

⁂

“How bad is it, Owo?”

“Michael?”

“Our supplies.”

Owosekun sighed heavily. “You can check my figures, if you want. But the best-case scenario is that we have ten days’ worth of food.”

“Best-case? What’s the realistic estimate, then?”

“A week? We need food, we need medicine. Folks need pay, if we’re to keep her afloat. You know I’ll stay—and Detmer, and Saru, and some others—as long as it’s not a deathtrap, but…most people like to have coin in their pockets.”

“_Discovery_ can be home, but we can’t force her to be,” Michael agreed. “Come with me, let’s look at the charts.”

⁂

“So,” Michael concluded, when her war council had all weighed in, “we need to score within the week, or we’re toast.”

“Succinct,” Saru agreed, darkly amused.

“We can take a ship, or a few ships…” Michael frowned. “But there’s no guaranteeing we can find prey that’ll be enough.”

Nhan agreed. “Besides, you’ve been having the quartermasters steer us away from well-traveled waters. On my suggestion,” she added hastily, “but our supplies are less substantial than I’d guessed, and it isn’t ideal.”

Reno snorted. “It’s the ancient knife’s edge of the sea. We need food so that we can head out again, and push back the day we’ll need food again, so we can return to her, unto the day we die. I’m not sorry we’ve gone pirate, but it does mean the ocean can fuck us rougher.”

“That’s part of what you like about it,” Keyla teased, and Jett flipped her the bird with a laugh.

“Right, then,” Saru interrupted. He’d never had much patience for sexual humor. “Suggestions, anyone?”

“What we need,” Joann mused unhappily, “is something without variables. If we just go after ships, there’s no telling how much we’d get out of them. Which would be fine, if we weren’t on a ticking clock.”

“Why not Fort Faber?” Detmer asked, and everyone’s heads whipped up to stare at her. “What? We can reach it in four days, three if we get better wind. It’s not a ‘specially _big_ fort, but they’ve got, y’know. _Stuff_.” 

Michael looked at Nhan. “Do you think we could take it?”

“Only if we’re very lucky. They’ll see us coming.”

“Reno?”

“Not to be a bitch, but we _might_ be able to if we get there in four days, like Detmer said. We’d _definitely_ take it if we got there in eight.”

“Desperation? Yes, you’re right. We’d lose more people, though, wouldn’t we?”

Reno shrugged. “I don’t _like_ it. But it’s better than losing everyone. Call it plan C.”

“What are A and B?”

“Whatever Detmer’s thinking, and whatever Dr. Culber is thinking. Dunno which is which, but at least they’ve got their thinking faces on.”

Detmer flashed a grin, fox-sharp. “False flag, y’see? We’ll just pull up like a normal cargo drop-off, and attack from within.”

Michael shook her head. “They’d sink _Discovery_ as soon as they’d realized what we were about. We don’t have the numbers to protect her and strong-arm them at the same time.” Keyla gave an even-tempered shrug, and Michael made a tense half-gesture with her fingers, smoothing the map corner. “What’ve you got, Hugh?”

“I like Detmer’s flag idea, actually. Building on that…” he tugged on his short beard while he reworked his original line of thinking. “What I would suggest is that we run up a smallpox flag, and I escort some ‘survivors’ in through the front door. They know me, at Fort Faber. They won’t suspect. Meanwhile the rest—I don’t know how they’d get in. But I suspect Paul does. He was once friendly with its commander.”

There was a brief pause, and Dr. Stamets raised his eyebrows in apparent irritation, which Dr. Culber either did not notice or chose to ignore. “_Former_ commander. Things may have changed.” He left his chair at the end of the table to lean over the map, Dr. Culber shifting to one side to accommodate him, an easy grace and small sidelong smile like they were partnered in a dance. “Fort Faber,” he said slowly, “has a blind spot.” He lightly penciled the shape of a corner onto the outline of the small island. “There. Not big enough for a ship to hide, but maybe longboats. We can get in there, if we’re quick and careful.”

Joann frowned. Michael gave her a gentle nonverbal nudge to explain why. “It’s…a fort. Wouldn’t they do something to make up for the blind spot?”

Dr. Stamets twirled his pencil between two fingers. “As I said, the present commander may have changed things. But when I was based there, the commander liked to take advantage of that strip of beach for,” he coughed delicately, “private use. He deemed the threat too slim. I…I don’t know,” he admitted, the confidence bleeding out of him. “Captain Burnham? Which plan has the least risk, do you think?”

Michael inclined her head elegantly. “We’ll do all of them.”

Nahn faltered. “Ma’am?”

“Detmer, aim to have us arrive in—let’s split the difference, six days. We’ll anchor here,” she took Stamet’s pencil and marked an x, “and send a small crew with Dr. Culber while the rest use Dr. Stamet’s beach. Do you think we can time it to arrive at night, Detmer?”

Keyla shrugged. “Even if we don’t, we can hide in the cove, out of their line of sight. I suppose they might patrol that far, but if they do, we can take that as our entrance cue, ey?”

“Good. Any closing thoughts?”

“Culber’s crew,” Joann put in, “ought to wear skirts. The fort will drop their guard even further…given the clear lack of threat.” She fluttered her eyelashes, and the council erupted into laughter. 

⁂  
  


“D’you want a peek, Jo?” Keyla stood at the rail of the bow, spyglass in her hands. One of the younger able seamen had just shouted from the crow’s nest; Fort Faber was a dot on the horizon, too small for Joann to identify. She rubbed her hands on her burgundy skirt, trying to clean off the worst of a spectacular ink stain, and came to Keyla’s side, letting their hips brush against each other. Detmer gave her a long look, as if to say she’d noticed what Owosekun was doing, but did not pull away, instead looping one arm around her and resting her jaw against Joann’s shoulder briefly. Smiling, Owo lifted the glass to her left eye, in which her distance sight was stronger. She needed eyeglasses, really, and had been going to purchase them in Port Royal—but now that would have to wait until they’d scored. The waves at the horizon were burnt-orange, catching the color of the sun as it slipped away.

“You might have better luck if you point it at 11 o’clock,” Keyla whispered into her ear. Ah. And there it was. She wondered if looking had been a mistake, for now all she could think was how much bigger a fort was than a ship, and how much stronger stone than wood. She was suddenly as conscious of Keyla Detmer’s breathing as if it were her own.

“When do you get off watch?” she whispered.

“About ten minutes. Was gonna take a nap. Why, d’you want me for something?” And there it was: Detmer tried to smirk, but her breathing hitched, and she couldn’t quite manage it.

“You could nap in my cabin,” Joann told her, trying to keep her voice casual, but probably failing.

Keyla kissed her cheek. “What, scared this is our last chance?” She looked at her face more closely. “Oh. You _are_. Yes. ‘Course. I’ll be along in a moment, my darling.” 

Owosekun, once alone in her tiny cabin, broke into a fit of hysterical laughter. She felt like they’d skipped a few steps, going from awkwardly slapping Detmer on the back to asking to bed her in a week’s time, but, well, maybe it was not so surprising for a pirate. Which she was. They both were, along with their entire _de facto_ family. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what had they _done_?

Right. Alright. She found a bottle of whiskey and took three small swallows. Nothing had truly changed. They would live or die in battle, and their bonds would keep them going. The Navy was no different, only harder, crueler, and more terrifying to its own sailors. They were going to win, she felt, and keep winning—and if they did not, at least her mates would say her real name when they committed her body to the sea. That was worth something, it really was.

Keyla stuck her head in, then slipped the rest of her body through the cracked door.

“You could open it all the way, Detmer.”

“Nah, Mr. Saru’s in the corridor behind me, I don’t want him thinking we’re _not_ having a clandestine meeting and knock.” Joann giggled and capped the bottle. “Ooh, having a drink for courage? Excellent, then napping _was_ a euphemism, thrilled to hear it.” She sat beside her on the bed and let their knees touch. Joann kissed her full on the lips. 

They lost track of time for a while, all warmth and softness.

“We might want fewer clothes,” Keyla mumbled, lips against Joann’s temple.

Owosekun felt a stab of guilt. “You said you needed a nap, are you sure?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” Keyla started unbuttoning her own waistcoat. Jo laughed and stood up to shimmy out of her long skirt. Once it hit the floor, Keyla pulled Joann into her lap to kiss her again, and again, until they broke away from each other, laughing, to get the rest of their clothes off.

They spoke very little. In other circumstances, they may have felt the need to shower each other in compliments and endearments, but neither of them did. It wasn’t like they didn’t both know how they felt, and there were more interesting things to be done with their mouths. So—yes, yes, beautiful, and wanted this for so long, and all that, but what of cunnilingus?

Keyla kissed down her chest and across her stomach, sometimes drily, sometimes with the flat of her tongue sliding across Jo’s skin, until she reached the apex of her legs. She kissed her clit twice, slowly, before curling her tongue inside Jo, who spread her thighs further and made an absurd cat-like sound of satisfaction. Detmer sweetly fucked her with her tongue for some time, until Joann, thighs trembling, told her to stop.

“I can’t stand not being able to reach you to kiss you any longer,” she pleaded, and Keyla laughed. They rearranged themselves, sitting upright facing each other, legs folded and open so they could give each other their fingers. This was, in Jo’s opinion, even better, to be able to make Detmer fall apart at the same time, and watch her face.

They got each other off two or three times apiece, and crumbled together on the bed, trying to use each other as pillows. As their breathing slowed and skin cooled, Joann traced her fingers lightly over the kiss-bruise she’d left on Keyla’s shoulder. Skin was so fragile, she thought.

“We’re going to be fine,” Keyla whispered.

“I know,” Joann whispered back, and meant it. She believed they would survive. It was the cost she feared.

⁂

Owosekun goes with Culber’s knot of sailors. Detmer goes with Michael’s. There is a long, embarrassing moment when they part, where neither of them wants to initiate a kiss, but both of them are disappointed not to receive one. They finally give up and lean in at the same time. Nobody pays them much mind, but when they part, Owosekun climbs into the longboat, where Culber and Reno each give her a teasing poke with their elbows.

The longboat slid along the water’s surface, smooth and easy and not in the least threatening. Just a half-dozen ladies and a naval physician, come “to ask Captain Leland whether we could stay a spell at Fort Faber, only until this nasty bout of, ah, _digestive distress_ had cleared up aboard ship, it’s no place for a delicate constitution, though dear Dr. Culber has done his best…and oh, my, what a _singularly_ charming seagull, just there, on the eastern wall, no _eastern_, there’s nothing to be seen to the west…”

Sylvia Tilly would have been magnificent on the stage.

When Burnham’s side of the crew surged over the western wall, Leland aimed his pistol in Detmer’s direction, and Owosekun very calmly shot him in the chest. It was not the first time she had killed in battle, nor was it even the last of the day, but there was a sliver of time in which she saw him dying, and realized there was no turning back. And then she remembered she had kissed Keyla Detmer in front of their entire crew, and nobody was bothered in the least. Thank _God_ she’d turned pirate.

They win, somehow. Mostly because they’d scared the fort witless, partly because there was so much reluctance on the soldiers’ parts to shoot a nice young woman who’d just been drinking tea with the commanding officer. The crew took most of the guards alive, and locked them in their own cells.

Jo’s real job comes next: organizing a thoughtful inventory of the fort’s supplies, and selecting what to take. “Is it enough?” Michael asked, hovering in cool concern.

“Well, depending on whether you want longevity or speed—we can set ourselves up for a month or three, Commander.”

In response to which Michael smiled, truly whole-heartedly smiled, for the first time in weeks. 

⁂

Detmer finds her when they’re safely on _Discovery_ again, Owosekun worn-out and contentedly resting, drink in hand. “How are you holding up, my pirate queen?”

“Well enough,” Owo shrugged. “I ache, but I’m happy.”

She held her arm out for Keyla to sit and curl against her side. They sat in silence for a long time, just warmth and stars and Rhys’s fiddle.

“What happens now?” Detmer asked, voice sleepy.

“Crime.”

“I mean for us, Owo. What d’you want to do with our life of crime?”

Owosekun thought it over carefully. “I want to thrive. We never have before, the British Empire wouldn’t let us. No nation will.”

Keyla smiled softly. “The doctors are getting married, did you hear?”

“Hugh told me. Michael’s officiating. I’ve never seen Dr. Stamets look so _soft_ before.”

“We should think about that.”

“You’ll have to court me first, Detmer.”

“Oh, dearie me, what a fucking hardship.” Owo laughed, and Keyla yawned. “I’m gonna fall asleep on your shoulder now, if you’ve no objections.”

“None at all, my pirate queen,” Joann returned.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand done! 
> 
> This work's title was taken from the Cosmo Jarvis song "Gay Pirates."
> 
> If you're interested in the roles of women and queer people in the Age of Sail, I particularly recommend the YA series Jacky Faber (begins with Bloody Jack), by L.A. Meyer, the TV show Black Sails, and this excellent episode of the History is Gay nonfiction podcast: https://www.historyisgaypodcast.com/listen/2017/12/30/episode-1-were-some-pirates-poofters.
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr as cartograffiti and on Pillowfort as Jackalope!


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